James Ellison (actor)
James Ellison (born James Ellison Smith; May 4, 1910 – December 23, 1993) was an American film actor who appeared in nearly 70 films from 1932 to 1962. Biography Ellison was born in Guthrie Center, Iowa, the son of Edward James Smith and Ona Mary Ellis. He worked for a time in a film laboratory and while there was offered a screen test. He developed the film footage himself, and after he saw it, decided it was not satisfactory so he would not show it to the director. But the director saw it anyway and Ellison got a contract. He spent much of his career in westerns, including a stint in the mid-1930s as Johnny Nelson, the sidekick of Hopalong Cassidy in Paramount's highly successful series. Although he was a "supporting player" in the series, his name is oddly billed the same size and format as veteran actor and matinee idol William Boyd's. Though it is not confirmed, this is believed to be because the character Johnny Nelson is very prominent in the original Hopalong Cassidy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Guthrie Center, Iowa
Guthrie Center is a city in Guthrie County, Iowa, United States, along the South Raccoon River. The population was 1,593 at the time of the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Guthrie County. Guthrie Center is part of the Des Moines–West Des Moines Metropolitan Statistical Area. History Guthrie Center was platted in 1856. It was named for Capt. Edwin B. Guthrie. The railroad was built through the settlement in 1879. Guthrie Center was incorporated in 1880. Geography Guthrie Center is located at (41.679618, -94.500812). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land. Climate According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Guthrie Center has a hot-summer humid continental climate, abbreviated "Dfa" on climate maps. Demographics 2010 census As of the census of 2010, there were 1,569 people, 677 households, and 387 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 796 housing units at an averag ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
RKO Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name (an abbreviation of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy holding, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum. RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Tom Conway
Tom Conway (born Thomas Charles Sanders, 15 September 1904 – 22 April 1967) was a British film, television, and radio actor remembered for playing private detectives (including The Falcon, Sherlock Holmes, Bulldog Drummond, and The Saint) and psychiatrists, among other roles. Conway played "The Falcon" in 10 episodes of the series, taking over from his brother, George Sanders, in ''The Falcon's Brother'' (1942), in which they both starred. He also appeared in several Val Lewton films. Early life Conway was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. His younger brother was fellow actor George Sanders. Their younger sister, Margaret Sanders, was born in 1912. At the outbreak of the Russian Revolution (1917), the family moved to England, where Conway was educated at Bedales School and Brighton College. He travelled to Northern Rhodesia, where he worked in mining and ranching, then returned to England, appearing in several plays with the Manchester Repertory Company and performing on BBC ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Edward Everett Horton
Edward Everett Horton Jr. (March 18, 1886 – September 29, 1970) was an American character actor. He had a long career in film, theater, radio, television, and voice work for animated cartoons. Early life Horton was born in Kings County, New York (now Brooklyn, New York City) to Edward Everett Horton, a compositor for ''The New York Times'', and his wife, Isabella S. ( Diack) Horton. His father had English and German ancestry, and his mother was born in Matanzas, Cuba to George and Mary ( Orr) Diack, natives of Scotland. He attended Boys' High School, Brooklyn and Baltimore City College, where he later was inducted into its Hall of Fame. He was a student at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he majored in German. However, he was asked to leave after he climbed to the top of a building and, after a crowd gathered, threw off a dummy, making them think he had jumped. He attended the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn for one year, until the school discontinued its arts cours ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Charlotte Greenwood
Frances Charlotte Greenwood (June 25, 1890 – December 28, 1977) was an American actress and dancer. Born in Philadelphia, Greenwood started in vaudeville, and starred on Broadway, movies and radio. Standing almost six feet tall (some sources say 5'10"), she was best known for her long legs and high kicks. She earned the unique praise of being, in her words, the "...only woman in the world who could kick a giraffe in the eye." Theatre In 1913, Oliver Morosco cast her as Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo late in the run of L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk's ''The Tik-Tok Man of Oz'' (better known in its novelization as ''Tik-Tok of Oz''). In 1916, Morosco commissioned a successful star vehicle stage play titled ''So Long Letty''. In 1919 Morosco brought her back in the sequel ''Linger Longer Letty''. This role made her a star; she reprised it in the 1929 movie of the same name. She appeared with actors including Charles Ruggles, Betty Grable, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Carmen Miranda
Carmen Miranda, (; born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha, 9 February 1909 – 5 August 1955) was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, dancer, Broadway actress and film star who was active from the late 1920s onwards. Nicknamed "The Brazilian Bombshell", Miranda was known for her signature fruit hat outfit that she wore in her American films. As a young woman, she designed hats in a boutique before making her first recordings with composer Josué de Barros in 1929. Miranda's 1930 recording of "Taí (Pra Você Gostar de Mim)", written by Joubert de Carvalho, catapulted her to stardom in Brazil as the foremost interpreter of samba. During the 1930s, Miranda performed on Brazilian radio and appeared in five Brazilian '' chanchadas'', films celebrating Brazilian music, dance and the country's carnival culture. ''Hello, Hello Brazil!'' and ''Hello, Hello, Carnival!'' embodied the spirit of these early Miranda films. The 1939 musical ''Banana da Terra'' (directed by Ruy Co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Twentieth Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film studio, film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios, a division of The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by 20th Century Studios and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (Buena Vista Home Entertainment) distributes the films produced by 20th Century Studios in home media under the 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment banner. For over 80 years – beginning with its founding in 1935 and ending in 2019 (when it became part of Walt Disney Studios), 20th Century Fox was one of the then Major film studio, "Big Six" major American film studios. It was formed in 1935 from the merger of the Fox Film, Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures and was originally known ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
The Gang's All Here (1943 Film)
''The Gang's All Here'' is a 1943 American Twentieth Century Fox Technicolor musical film starring Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda and James Ellison. The film, directed and choreographed by Busby Berkeley, is known for its use of musical numbers with fruit hats. Included among the 10 highest-grossing films of that year, it was at that time Fox's most expensive production. Musical highlights include Carmen Miranda performing an insinuating, witty version of "You Discover You're in New York" that lampoons fads, fashions, and wartime shortages of the time. The film features Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat" which, because of its sexual innuendo (dozens of scantily clad women handling very large bananas), apparently prevented the film from being shown in Brazil on its initial release. In the US, the censors dictated that the chorus girls must hold the bananas at the waist and not at the hip. Alice Faye sings "A Journey to a Star," "No Love, No Nothin'," and the surreal finale " ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Jack Benny
Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American entertainer who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a long pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated summation "''Well!''" His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny portrayed himself as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and claimed perpetually to be 39 years of age. Early life Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago, Illinois, on February 14, 1894, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky (1864–1946) and Emma Sachs Kubelsky (1869–1917), sometimes called "Naomi". Meyer was a saloon ow ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Charley's Aunt
''Charley's Aunt'' is a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. The story centres on Lord Fancourt Babberley, an undergraduate whose friends Jack and Charley persuade him to impersonate the latter's aunt. The complications of the plot include the arrival of the real aunt and the attempts of an elderly fortune hunter to woo the bogus aunt. The play concludes with three pairs of young lovers united, along with an older pair – Charley's real aunt and Jack's widowed father. The play was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds in February 1892. It then opened in London at the Royalty Theatre on 21 December 1892 and quickly transferred to the larger Globe Theatre on 30 January 1893. The production broke the historic record for longest-running play worldwide, running for 1,466 performances. It was produced by the actor W. S. Penley, a friend of Thomas, who appeared as Babberley. The play was also a success on Broadway in 1893, and in Paris, where it had further ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
The Undying Monster
''The Undying Monster'', also known as ''The Hammond Mystery'', is a 1942 American mystery horror film directed by John Brahm and written by Lillie Hayward and Michel Jacoby, based on Jessie Douglas Kerruish's 1922 novel of the same name.Meehan, 2010, p. 97 worldcat.org; accessed 27 June 2015. The film stars , Heather Angel and , and focus ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
B Movie
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature (akin to B-sides for recorded music). However, the U.S. production of films intended as second features largely ceased by the end of the 1950s. With the emergence of commercial television at that time, film studio B movie production departments changed into television film production divisions. They created much of the same type of content in low budget films and series. The term ''B movie'' continues to be used in its broader sense to this day. In its post-Golden Age usage, B movies can range from lurid exploitation films to independent arthouse films. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in the 19 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |